So, two reports, two positions as a leader in each one for the OpenText ECM portfolio. We’re pretty happy right now.

In case you’re not familiar with the Forrester approach to evaluating the ECM marketplace, back in 2015 their analysts decided one report was no longer enough to capture everything ECM platforms were being tasked with covering in the modern enterprise. They split their analysis into two focus areas:

Business Content Services (BCS) – focusing on managing the documents, emails, spreadsheets and multimedia that result from knowledge workers’ day-to-day activities. ECM platforms are evaluated on their ability to simplify user interaction, improve collaboration, and apply governance controls.

Both reports score vendors’ performance in three primary categories: Current Offering, Market Presence, and Strategy. And our ranking in the latter is what makes the 2017 Forrester evaluations truly invigorating for us. The Content Suite and Documentum platforms each received the highest score among all vendors in the “Strategy” category of the Transactional report, and among the highest Strategy scores in the Business report.

According to the Transactional report, “ECM vendors must show coherent technology, go-to-market, and partner strategies to help their customers be successful and manage their transactional content within a broad information ecosystem. This ecosystem includes on-premises and cloud-based enterprise applications, mobile use cases, and interoperability with other content management systems.”

We believe these scores validate our vision for the future of ECM — a strategy that crystallized last year with the launch of Content Suite 16; and took a huge step forward with our investment in Documentum.

In our view, successful ECM solutions of the future will allow organizations to leverage their current systems with the application of lightweight, purpose-built service apps to solve targeted business problems. Cloud-driven, user-friendly, and low-effort, these content services will reside in the background and will be fully integrated to promote productivity on both sides of the firewall.

For OpenText, this means converging the strengths of two, class-leading platforms and extending their effectiveness with innovative new services built on LEAP technology. We feel Forrester has recognized the potential of this direction, and are more enthused about the possibilities than ever.

Regardless of your role in ECM or current solution provider, the TCS and BCS reports from Forrester offer thought-provoking insights into the future of ECM. Download them and then join us at Enterprise World 2017 to carry on the conversation.